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Sep. 4th, 2005 10:25 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
which_chickNote to self: You are far, far too old to sleep in a car. You won't get any freaking sleep. You will be stiff and sore and cranky.
I got to use the new reins exactly once before destroying them. They are now broken in pieces because I came off the IRH on the hard road. (Mariah was being ponied and she kicked at the IRH, who was not particularly crowding her, a fairly solid blow I blocked with my ankle. That sequence of events startled the IRH who skittered sideways as Mariah pivoted and hit us again with both barrels. I came off, though not at high speed or particularly dangerously. As falls go, it wasn't a bad one. The IRH pulled back hard and snapped my brand new reins, which I had not let go of because Rule #3 for coming off a horse is Do Not Let Go Of The Horse. (Rule #1 for coming off a horse is Don't and Rule #2 for coming off a horse is If you must, try to do so when the horse is not going very fast.) When the reins broke (damn it), I let go of the horse. Oops. Fortunately I re-caught her a minute later, but I really don't like the losing-control-of-the-horse thing. That's not a good.)
My ankle is an interesting shade of purple and sort of pouffy. It appears to be otherwise functional, so yay!
We set out on Saturday, riding some horses and ponying others. (Ponying is where you ride one horse and, from the back of the horse you are riding, you drag along another horse that has nobody sitting on it.) Depending on the skill level of your riding horse and the skill level of your leading horse, ponying can range from pure torture to a reasonably pleasant experience. I rode Absolut and ponied Nick (the IRH) and that went reasonably well. Absolut is sort of green but she's nonreactive and tolerates being bumped into by stupid red horses with issues on the motor vehicle front. Nick ponies respectably. She doesn't much like it, but she does it without pulling my arm off. The rope halter also discourages pulling because it's not broad and flat like web halters and it hurts when you lean into it. Nick laid back her ears and clicked her teeth at Absolut exactly once and I clocked her right smartly upside the head for it, whereupon her manners improved markedly.
In ponying, I have certain expectations of the riding horse and the leading horse. The riding horse MAY NOT kick, threaten or snap at the horse being led. The riding horse also MAY NOT buck or spook because the lead rope has gotten under his or her tail. These are the duties of the riding horse. For the leading horse, it MUST keep up with but not pass the riding horse, working on a slack lead. I should not have to pull the whole time. Also, the leading horse MUST NOT bite at or threaten the riding horse and it should stay on the designated side and not cross over in the back without being told to do so. I don't care if the horses involved hate each other -- if it's a ponying situation, they will act civilized because it's work related. In the field they can duke it out, but when they're riding horse and leading horse, the hostilities will cease.
We got to the Saturday ride on the late side of things. They'd left without us, though this was less of a problem than it might be. The ride goes on a set route, the same every year, and there are shortcuts so that the perennially tardy (like my horse people) can catch up fairly easily. We took the shortcut and headed 'em off at the pass and like that... I wouldn't have cared about catching up so much except that the whole goal here was exposure for the IRH and it's hardly very exposure-ish to ride with just the people we see all the time. I wanted buggies. I wanted mules. For that stuff, we had to catch up, and we did.
The Saturday ride was good. It was really good. Nick didn't get too wound up about anything, including vehicles, and we only had two episodes of emergency circles while stuff went by us. For the rest of the vehicles, including buggies and atvs and regular cars and stuff, she either went mostly forward in an approximately straight line on an almost-loose rein or stood still and looked at the vehicle without moving her feet. Both of those responses are BETTER than doing high-speed emergency circles, so I'm scoring that as a win.
The camping out thing went fairly well. While I didn't get any damn sleep in my Cavalier, the horse did not kill herself while tied to the trailer all night. Watching her dance out of the beam of the flashlight like she thought it was going to get her was pretty damn funny. She didn't strangle herself in the hay net, either, and that was a new experience as well.
Sunday, I wish we'd gotten a bit of an earlier start. We didn't head out until around noon, which ate up more of the day than I'd really have liked, but there is no rushing Liss. She does what she does, at her own speed, and you might as well just live with it. *sigh* It is sometimes very frustrating. On the way home, we had Liss on Elklin, ponying Mariah. Lynn (who'd left her husband, hopefully for good, on Friday and was hanging out at the house until further notice) had Sassafras. I had Nick. La had Angel, a red mare of Lynn's that allegedly bucked like a bronc but in reality was only a little cinchy and otherwise quite rideable. Herbie (Aunt Alice's boy) rode Ginger (Connie's mare, who is green but not sudden) and his wife rode Kova, who did an admirable job (for a green horse) of packing a nonrider. Brittany (who'd stayed the night with me in the car) rode her horse Cavvy and ponied Absolut. When we got to where Brittany needed to split off to head to her house, La took Absolut and ponied her off of Angel. After I came off, destroyed my reins, and walked a mile while leading my horse to calm down, we reorganized because we were at Herbie's house and his wife was way, way tired of riding. Herbie and his wife quit riding. I took Absolut from La and ponied Nick (I'd had her halter tied around her neck in case of emergencies -- a spare halter never hurts). La ponied Kova and Lynn took Ginger until we met Ash on the road (Theron dropped him off) and threw him on Ginger so that Lynn didn't have to drag her along. That was how we were when we got home.
I would be more worried about coming off the IRH, but it was very slow-motion, did not involve any cars at all, and was pretty justified what with the being hammered by that bitch Mariah. *sigh* I honestly didn't think we were crowding her that damn badly and the fact that she hit my ankle when kicking says that she wasn't directly in front of us -- she was out to the side or she'd never have been able to whack my damn ankle behind the bumpy ankle bone thing.
Anyway, despite the reins and the ankle and the coming-off-the-horse bullshit, it was a pretty successful two days of horse events. Nick did a fantastic job at the ride and she did really well on the ride home until we'd gone eight miles (out of twelve) and Mariah kicked us. We would have made it home just fine had that not happened. *sigh* I'm scoring this as a win but I'm damn pissed about my reins.
I got to use the new reins exactly once before destroying them. They are now broken in pieces because I came off the IRH on the hard road. (Mariah was being ponied and she kicked at the IRH, who was not particularly crowding her, a fairly solid blow I blocked with my ankle. That sequence of events startled the IRH who skittered sideways as Mariah pivoted and hit us again with both barrels. I came off, though not at high speed or particularly dangerously. As falls go, it wasn't a bad one. The IRH pulled back hard and snapped my brand new reins, which I had not let go of because Rule #3 for coming off a horse is Do Not Let Go Of The Horse. (Rule #1 for coming off a horse is Don't and Rule #2 for coming off a horse is If you must, try to do so when the horse is not going very fast.) When the reins broke (damn it), I let go of the horse. Oops. Fortunately I re-caught her a minute later, but I really don't like the losing-control-of-the-horse thing. That's not a good.)
My ankle is an interesting shade of purple and sort of pouffy. It appears to be otherwise functional, so yay!
We set out on Saturday, riding some horses and ponying others. (Ponying is where you ride one horse and, from the back of the horse you are riding, you drag along another horse that has nobody sitting on it.) Depending on the skill level of your riding horse and the skill level of your leading horse, ponying can range from pure torture to a reasonably pleasant experience. I rode Absolut and ponied Nick (the IRH) and that went reasonably well. Absolut is sort of green but she's nonreactive and tolerates being bumped into by stupid red horses with issues on the motor vehicle front. Nick ponies respectably. She doesn't much like it, but she does it without pulling my arm off. The rope halter also discourages pulling because it's not broad and flat like web halters and it hurts when you lean into it. Nick laid back her ears and clicked her teeth at Absolut exactly once and I clocked her right smartly upside the head for it, whereupon her manners improved markedly.
In ponying, I have certain expectations of the riding horse and the leading horse. The riding horse MAY NOT kick, threaten or snap at the horse being led. The riding horse also MAY NOT buck or spook because the lead rope has gotten under his or her tail. These are the duties of the riding horse. For the leading horse, it MUST keep up with but not pass the riding horse, working on a slack lead. I should not have to pull the whole time. Also, the leading horse MUST NOT bite at or threaten the riding horse and it should stay on the designated side and not cross over in the back without being told to do so. I don't care if the horses involved hate each other -- if it's a ponying situation, they will act civilized because it's work related. In the field they can duke it out, but when they're riding horse and leading horse, the hostilities will cease.
We got to the Saturday ride on the late side of things. They'd left without us, though this was less of a problem than it might be. The ride goes on a set route, the same every year, and there are shortcuts so that the perennially tardy (like my horse people) can catch up fairly easily. We took the shortcut and headed 'em off at the pass and like that... I wouldn't have cared about catching up so much except that the whole goal here was exposure for the IRH and it's hardly very exposure-ish to ride with just the people we see all the time. I wanted buggies. I wanted mules. For that stuff, we had to catch up, and we did.
The Saturday ride was good. It was really good. Nick didn't get too wound up about anything, including vehicles, and we only had two episodes of emergency circles while stuff went by us. For the rest of the vehicles, including buggies and atvs and regular cars and stuff, she either went mostly forward in an approximately straight line on an almost-loose rein or stood still and looked at the vehicle without moving her feet. Both of those responses are BETTER than doing high-speed emergency circles, so I'm scoring that as a win.
The camping out thing went fairly well. While I didn't get any damn sleep in my Cavalier, the horse did not kill herself while tied to the trailer all night. Watching her dance out of the beam of the flashlight like she thought it was going to get her was pretty damn funny. She didn't strangle herself in the hay net, either, and that was a new experience as well.
Sunday, I wish we'd gotten a bit of an earlier start. We didn't head out until around noon, which ate up more of the day than I'd really have liked, but there is no rushing Liss. She does what she does, at her own speed, and you might as well just live with it. *sigh* It is sometimes very frustrating. On the way home, we had Liss on Elklin, ponying Mariah. Lynn (who'd left her husband, hopefully for good, on Friday and was hanging out at the house until further notice) had Sassafras. I had Nick. La had Angel, a red mare of Lynn's that allegedly bucked like a bronc but in reality was only a little cinchy and otherwise quite rideable. Herbie (Aunt Alice's boy) rode Ginger (Connie's mare, who is green but not sudden) and his wife rode Kova, who did an admirable job (for a green horse) of packing a nonrider. Brittany (who'd stayed the night with me in the car) rode her horse Cavvy and ponied Absolut. When we got to where Brittany needed to split off to head to her house, La took Absolut and ponied her off of Angel. After I came off, destroyed my reins, and walked a mile while leading my horse to calm down, we reorganized because we were at Herbie's house and his wife was way, way tired of riding. Herbie and his wife quit riding. I took Absolut from La and ponied Nick (I'd had her halter tied around her neck in case of emergencies -- a spare halter never hurts). La ponied Kova and Lynn took Ginger until we met Ash on the road (Theron dropped him off) and threw him on Ginger so that Lynn didn't have to drag her along. That was how we were when we got home.
I would be more worried about coming off the IRH, but it was very slow-motion, did not involve any cars at all, and was pretty justified what with the being hammered by that bitch Mariah. *sigh* I honestly didn't think we were crowding her that damn badly and the fact that she hit my ankle when kicking says that she wasn't directly in front of us -- she was out to the side or she'd never have been able to whack my damn ankle behind the bumpy ankle bone thing.
Anyway, despite the reins and the ankle and the coming-off-the-horse bullshit, it was a pretty successful two days of horse events. Nick did a fantastic job at the ride and she did really well on the ride home until we'd gone eight miles (out of twelve) and Mariah kicked us. We would have made it home just fine had that not happened. *sigh* I'm scoring this as a win but I'm damn pissed about my reins.
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no subject
Date: 2005-09-05 11:58 pm (UTC)Can the reins be mended?
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Date: 2005-09-06 01:38 am (UTC)I did get to playtest the length and 7' or 8' is good. These were 7' but 7'6" or 8' wouldn't hurt. Anyway, they don't actually MAKE what I want, at least not anywhere I shop, so I might wind up generating my own reins. I've priced the options and rope is a lot cheaper than leather of sufficient heft to make reins that my stupid-ass horse won't break when she pulls back. Yacht rope is near-unbreakable (for horse-related activities -- 1/4" rope has a tensile strength of 2,200 lbs), fully spliceable, and machine washable. It doesn't shrink, feels good in my hands, and runs $ .27 per linear foot. Plus shipping, I expect I should be able to get an ample amount of rope (I'll use 1/4" as preliminary experiments with clothesline indicate that this is an acceptable size for working with.) for twenty dollars.
Hrm. Let's do the math. Figure 8' reins. Figure wasteage for splices and finishing, two feet per strand. (There's a lot of waste in splicing.) Figure four strands (with eight at the ends for braiding in the snaps). Hrm. Right. Losses for braiding four-strand round are (guesstimating) about 25%, so increase amount needed by that much.
8' + 2' = 10'* 4 strands = 40' plus 25% = 50 feet requred * .27 per foot = $13.50 -- even with shipping, that ain't bad.
Additional hardware required: None. Planning on using the extant scissors snaps that I salvaged from this set of reins and the last set of leather round-braided reins that I had before the CURRENT set of leather round-braided reins. (The previous set of leather round-braided reins died a natural death due to old age.)
I'm not worldclass on the rope skillz front but I can generate a six-strand round braid, a three, four, or five strand flat braid, an assortment of decorative knots including the fiador and turk's head, and eye, back, and end-to-end splices. (There are directions (http://www.neropes.com/splice/main.htm) for splices online. I follow the directions. If you think I have this crap memorized, you're fooling yourself. The braids I have memorized, but not the splices.) I reckon I have a sufficient amount of skill to make me some halfway decent reins.
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Date: 2005-09-06 01:44 am (UTC)That is incredibly cool that you can do all the braiding and splicing, even if you do have to consult directions. I have to consult directions for shit, too. Like that bike I took apart and put back together? A friend sent me pointers on how to get the crank out and how to get to the headset bearings.
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Date: 2005-09-06 01:58 am (UTC)